A provocative artist, Yann Marussich [CH] aims, in his performances, for the spectator not to leave unscathed. It was no different with the four works he presented at the 13th International Dance Biennal of Ceará, which took place from December 9 to 18, 2021.

In «Bain Brisé» (2010), the artist appears immersed in a bathtub full of glass. He shares this intimate scene not to reveal a superhuman side to his action but to create dreamlike images and trivial scenes of a bath made public.

For «Blanc» (2015), made in a public space, he appears all in white and stands still in silence. Passers-by are invited to answer a question by drawing and writing on the artist’s costume, who thus proposes a playful way of making urban and collective poetry, which evolves according to the context.

«AGOKWA» (2016) is a tribute to the figure of the man-woman common in Amerindian peoples. “I pay homage to the shamans who live within us and whom we find it difficult to recognise. I pay tribute to those man-women who have known how to bring to life the feminine and masculine parts that are intrinsically in them, but also in each of us. For this is what we are made of and we must recognise this, otherwise we will become dogs, the very dogs that devoured the Agokwa,” says the artist.

In «Pot-Pourri» (2021), Marussich creates a very slow four-hour painting that decomposes and recomposes itself in an imperceptible improvisation like the constant recomposition of the configuration of the grains of rice around the artist.

Marussich has a long-standing relationship with the Dance Biennale of Ceará. In addition to performances presented in some editions, in 2010, he conducted an artist residency with Cia Alysson Amancio, resulting in the piece «Com Cheiro de Peixe Criado», presented at the Bienal de Par em Par of the same year.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Yann Marussich is a trained dancer and worked with several French companies between 1983 and 1988 (Ballet Ludécher; Compagnie Vocalise Danse Théâtre; Compagnie Dominique Petit). At the same time, he became interested in martial arts. From 1989, he created his own pieces and developed an international career as a dancer and choreographer. From 1993 to 2000, he worked in the field of artistic programming as director of the Théâtre de l’Usine (Geneva), where he programmed contemporary dance and more specifically, new forms of expression. He also founded the ADC-Studio (Maison des Arts du Grütli, Geneva) in 1993 and was responsible for its artistic programming from 1993 to 1998. Also devoted to writing and drawing.